Bangladesh, other developing nations to study ways to dim sunshine, slow warming

Bangladesh, other developing nations to
study ways to dim sunshine, slow
warming

Reuters

Scientists in developing nations plan to step
up research into dimming sunshine to curb
climate change, hoping to judge if a man-
made chemical sunshade would be less risky
than a harmful rise in global temperatures.
Research into "solar geo-engineering", which
would mimic big volcanic eruptions that can
cool the Earth by masking the sun with a veil
of ash, is now dominated by rich nations and
universities such as Harvard and Oxford.
Twelve scholars, from countries including
Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India,
Jamaica and Thailand, wrote in the journal
Nature on Wednesday that the poor were most
vulnerable to global warming and should be
more involved.
"Developing countries must lead on solar geo-
engineering research," they wrote in a
commentary.
"The overall idea (of solar geo-engineering) is
pretty crazy but it is gradually taking root in
the world of research," lead author Atiq
Rahman, head of the Bangladesh Centre for
Advanced Studies, told Reuters by telephone.
The solar geo-engineering studies may be
helped by a new $400,000 research project,
the Solar Radiation Management Governance
Initiative (SRMGI), which is issuing a first call
for scientists to apply for finance this week.
The SRMGI is financed by the Open
Philanthropy Project, a foundation backed by
Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook,
and his wife, Cari Tuna, the scientists wrote.
The fund could help scientists in developing
nations study regional impacts of solar geo-
engineering such as on droughts, floods or
monsoons, said Andy Parker, a co-author and
project director of the SRMGI.
Rahman said the academics were not taking
sides about whether geo-engineering would
work. Among proposed ideas, planes might
spray clouds of reflective sulphur particles
high in the Earth's atmosphere.
"The technique is controversial, and rightly so.
It is too early to know what its effects would
be: it could be very helpful or very harmful,"
they wrote.
A UN panel of climate experts, in a leaked
draft of a report about global warming due for
publication in October, is sceptical about solar
geo-engineering, saying it may be
"economically, socially and institutionally
infeasible."
Among risks, the draft obtained by Reuters
says it might disrupt weather patterns, could
be hard to stop once started, and might
discourage countries from making a promised
switch from fossil fuels to cleaner energies.
Still, Rahman said most developed nations had
"abysmally failed" so far in their pledges to
cut greenhouse gas emissions, making radical
options to limit warming more attractive.
The world is set for a warming of three
degrees Celsius (5.7 Fahrenheit) or more
above pre-industrial times, he said, far above a
goal of keeping a rise in temperatures "well
below" 2C (3.6F) under the 2015 Paris
Agreement among almost 200 nations.